How to Set a Maxtor Hard Drive to Slave

As computers become commonplace in households, more and more individuals are resorting to installing their own upgrades in their systems. One of the most common upgrades is the addition of a new hard drive. Adding a second hard drive to your existing computer can greatly increase its storage capacity for programs, movies, music, games, files, and anything else that can be stored on a computer. In the demonstration below, two methods will be shown on how to set a new Maxtor IDE hard drive to be used as a secondary, or slave, hard drive.

Instructions

Setting Drive to Slave By Cable Select

1. 

   Make certain the hard drive's jumper pin is set to "CS" or cable select. The jumper settings are determined by a small, removable tab found on the same end of the hard drive as the power and IDE cable connection pins.

2. 

   Take the small, removable pin out, using a pair of tweezers. The correct pin set to place it in is the one that reads "CS" or "Cable Select." Most hard drives have a diagram on the main label that shows you which way the jumper pin should be placed. It doesn't matter which end of the pin goes in first, but it must always go in a vertical direction. (A horizontal pin is "neutral" and has no effect on the hard drive. If your hard drive has a horizontal pin, it is simply a spare and has no bearing on which option is selected.)

3. 

   Once the drive's jumper setting is set to cable select, connect it to the the middle of the IDE cable. A standard cable will automatically read the middle drive as the "slave" (or secondary) drive and the one on the end as the "Master" (or primary) drive.

4. Connect the cable and the power supply to the hard drive, and it should automatically be registered as the slave drive.

Setting Drive to Slave By Jumper Select

1. There are two methods to setting a drive as a slave, or secondary, drive. They are by cable select and jumper settings. If your computer's internal setup makes it difficult to connect the slave drive to the middle of the IDE cable, you can override the cable's option simply by setting the jumper pin to "Master" and "Slave."

2. In order to do this, follow the instructions above to remove the pin from both of your drives, but instead of placing both in the Cable Select (CS) jumper setting, place your primary drive on "Master," and the new, secondary drive on "Slave."

3. 

   Replace both drives in their respective slots, drive the screws in tightly to secure them in place, and your system should be set to go.

Tips & Warnings

• Some older IDE cables are not configured to work via cable select. Though this option seems to be the easiest, plug-n-play option available, if you have one of these older incompatible cables, it will cause your system a good deal of confusion. If you experience any difficulties with the cable select option above, try the second method and see if that works. If your hard drive does not have any jumper pins, it may be a SATA drive as opposed to an IDE drive. SATA drives do not need to be configured as master/slave drives and have become the newest standard in most new computers.

• Whenever you work on the insides of your system, make sure to ground yourself. This prevents any static you may have built up on yourself from discharging on your system and potentially damaging internal components. The easiest way to ground yourself is simply by touching the metal power supply (on the upper or lower rear of the case) once it's turned off, or you could purchase a grounding strap for a minimal fee if you expect to work on the inside of computers often.

Resources

• Read this Article in Spanish